Adam Dollard des Ormeaux, (1635-1660), usually known simply as "Dollard des Ormeaux", was a colonist of New France who led his companions from the newly founded town of Ville Marie in 1660 to ambush a larger force of Iroquois.

At the time, Ville Marie (which would later become Montreal), had a population of about 600. Through the Indian allies of the colonists, rumours were heard that the Iroquois would soon come in force from the west to exterminate the new settlement.

Against the advice of seasoned Indian fighters, Dollard got the support of the governor of Montreal, Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, to organize an expedition west. The group comprised about 16 volunteers who had little or no experience of Indian warfare. After a 10-day canoe trip up the Saint Lawrence and the Ottawa River, they set up camp not far from Long Sault, in a former stockade. They were soon surrounded by about 700 Iroquois, and after a siege lasting several days, were all killed or captured and massacred. For reasons unknown, the Iroquois did not continue east to capture Montreal. The events were witnessed by about 40 Huron allies who at times had joined the colonists in the stockade and at other times had harried the Iroquois from outside.

For more than a century afterwards Catholic nuns, who had the responsibility for most of education in New France, and then in Quebec, weaved a myth around what they considered to be the ultimate sacrifice and selfless Christian devotion of Dollard and his men, who had been martyrs for the church, and for the colony.

During the First World War the government of Canada tried to use the myth of Dollard to entice French Canada into joining up to fight overseas against Germany, (just as Dollard and his companions had gone away to confront the enemy instead of waiting for them to arrive). The government did not understand that a martyr is not the same as a hero, and this attempt turned against the myth of Dollard instead of helping the war effort. The misunderstandings around this and other elements led to the Conscription Crisis of 1917 which set some French Canadians to start thinking of themselves as Quebecers, and not Canadians.

Whatever remained of the myth of Dollard faded away in the 1960s as church attendance and religiosity declined in Quebec, and as a new generation of Quebec historians worked at debunking all myths, as part of the spirit of total change that came with the Quiet Revolution.